SheReads

“For a nation steeped in this self-image, it is embarrassing, guilt-producing, and disillusioning to consider the role that race and slavery played in shaping the national narrative.”38 To address these discomfiting facts, we have created a founding mythology that teaches us to think of the “free” and “abolitionist” North as the heart of the American Revolution. Schoolchildren learn that the Boston Tea Party sparked the Revolution and that Philadelphia was home to the Continental Congress, the place where intrepid men penned the Declaration and Constitution. But while our nation’s founding documents were written in Philadelphia, they were mainly written by Virginians.”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story